Liquid crystal tunable plasmonic color generation device, method and applications

A method for fabricating an optical component, comprising:

• forming over a substrate a periodically-arrayed, nanostructured bottom layer;
• disposing in contact with the periodically-arrayed, nanostructured bottom material layer a homogeneously aligned liquid crystal material layer having a birefringence, Δn, that is equal to or greater than 0.3;
• and
• disposing an optically transparent top electrode and a LC alignment layer over the liquid crystal material layer.

An optical color generation method, comprising:

• providing an optical component comprising:
• a liquid crystal (LC)-plasmonic cell including a bottom electrode and a top electrode configured in a vertical electrode configuration, wherein the bottom electrode comprises a substrate and a periodically-arrayed, nanostructured, metallic, plasmonic material layer disposed on a top surface of the substrate, further comprising:
• a reconfigurable LC having a birefringence, Δn, that is equal to or greater than 0.2, disposed in contact with the bottom electrode, wherein in an OFF-state the LC has a parallel (homogeneous) orientation to the plasmonic surface;
• and
• a voltage source coupled to the electrodes, wherein the top electrode is transparent over the visible spectrum and the periodically-arrayed, nanostructured, metallic, plasmonic material layer is a voltage-tunable-color surface that is optically reflective over the visible, further wherein the LC-plasmonic cell can reflect color across the visible spectrum;
• and
• varying a voltage from the voltage source to selectively change a plasmonic resonance of the periodically-arrayed, nanostructured, metallic, plasmonic material layer, wherein a particular color from the spectrum of visible light is reflected from the periodically-arrayed, nanostructured, metallic, plasmonic material layer and out through the LC-plasmonic cell.